Criminals can target your deleted emails

September 29, 2014

Did you know that your deleted email data is always at risk? Just because you’ve deleted your emails, it doesn’t mean that they are safe from prying eyes.

In some unsettled news, it has been reported that criminals have been targeting deleted emails to steal confidential information about people and businesses. It is a common misconception that just because an email is deleted, all of the data ends up being completely erased. This has led to an air of complacency by many companies and a higher risk of important data getting stolen long after the message has been deleted.

Criminals can get your data by directly attacking Internet Service Provider servers. Many ISP’s store email messages for months, which include all deleted emails. If your account is hacked, someone can access your entire email history, including everything you’ve deleted, without having to gain access to your devices via phishing emails, malware or viruses.

What is more worrying is that many ISP’s store messages as plain text, so it is easy for an attacker to get access to your messages and attachments.

Sounds pretty bleak doesn’t it? Well, there are a couple of things you can do to reduce the risk of any sensitive data getting stolen.

Contact your ISP and see if you can permanently delete all historic messages. You should also do this if you have switched ISP providers at any point.